Stimulating Our Way Right Into Serfdom

Mark Steyn on what’s wrong with the “stimulus” plan passed by House Democrats – and only by House Democrats. Which is only fair since Republicans were completely shut out of anything to do with crafting the pork-fest of leftist spending. Take for instance the vital importance of STDs to stimulating the economy:

Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House, is on TV explaining the (at this point the congregation shall fall to its knees and prostrate itself) “stimulus.” “How,” asks the lady from CBS, “does $335 million in STD prevention stimulate the economy?”

“I’ll tell you how,” says Speaker Pelosi. “I’m a big believer in prevention. And we have, er… there is a part of the bill on the House side that is about prevention. It’s about it being less expensive to the states to do these measures.”

Makes a lot of sense. If we have more STD prevention, it will be safer for loose women to go into bars and pick up feckless men, thus stimulating the critical beer and nuts and jukebox industries. To do this, we need trillion-dollar deficits, which our children and grandchildren will have to pay off, but, with sufficient investment in prevention measures, there won’t be any children or grandchildren, so there’s that problem solved.

Steyn only opens with that bit of madness. There is ever so much more. The US is firmly on the trail that Europe has blazed to out-of-control statism. The spendthrift Democrats are seeing to that.

Worst of all, the “stimulus” will do nothing to help the economy and stands to do massive harm. If Europe and the rest of the world retaliate for the blatant protectionism the Democrats have inserted into their wholly-owned plan, the economy will take a massive hit. The economies of many countries will tank, and the recession will go on for a long time.